ARTICLES / Oida Therapy - Part Four

By comparing different mystical traditions and their methodologies for producing a well balanced healthy person we discovered a considerable number of similarities. It is obvious that at some levels and instances these mystical traditions must be associated with each other. The OIDA therapist is therefore open and tolerant to all mystical traditions, even though the final outcome of any OIDA therapeutic session will depend on the capability of the therapist to actually help the patient to accept and apply the healing potentials of a particular mystical tradition.

Mystical traditions should give us support to reach the healthy state of existence or the healing circle. When we talk about mystical traditions, we generously presuppose that a true spiritual fundament of some higher revelation exists behind a respective faith-system. This higher revelation is based on some background and antiquity and is backed up by a content of transcendental values and messages. We do not assume the right to judge how authorized or not authorized a mystical tradition really is. OIDA-therapy does not want to influence the faith of the patient.

Mystical traditions and institutionalized religions

Mystical traditions have provided many people with inspiration to become better humans. Unfortunately those same traditions are also abused by worldly-minded, power-hungry individuals. This is the reason why many people do not have faith in any mystical tradition. For such people OIDA-therapy provides information, which has moved the great thinkers of the world to become non-sectarian and to discover new spiritual values, previously unknown to them.

For these great thinkers OIDA-therapy is a complete adventure - a journey of discovery, exploring the feelings and the faith of other cultures and inspirations for humanity, which may even lead them to discover their own faith. Faith is natural for everybody. The question is, where and in whom to have faith. This depends on one’s own conditions and the sincerity of approach.

Oriental values are now very popular. This popularity is especially due to the fact that people have lost their faith in the most prominent institutionalized Western religions. Religions which have marked history by their violent efforts to oblige others to accept their faith are obviously less charming than those that have never done so, and which are known for spreading kindness among human beings.

We are using the term “mystical tradition” rather than “religion”, because the abuses perpetrated by institutionalized religions or rather individuals hiding themselves behind such structures, could cause misunderstandings of our purpose and the rejection of our proposal even before it has been properly understood.

There are sincere and loving teachers in all the mystical schools and since healing is the focus of OIDA-therapy help can be taken from them as well.

We believe that God loves all people and has therefore sent inspiration and intuition to all the peoples of this world. This belief is corroborated and reflected in the similarities of mystical traditions; how they coincide in so many ways with similar values, recommendations and practices.

If a person with no faith in any mystical tradition acquires a vision with their common sense, which brings them into a healthy state of life then that is also most welcome. At the same time we do not think that any human resident on this planet can afford to ignore the enormous contribution which mystical traditions have made for humanity in the field of faith, values, language, music, literature, art, and also science.

One of the main objectives of OIDA-therapy is to present the scientific aspects and benefits of faith as well as the subsequent practices which faith brings to us.

Science is a process based on a theory, evaluated by a verification process, which, if it is true, produces the promised and expected result.

Those who are living in the realm of faith are satisfied. This has already been proven on countless occasions. And those who are unhappy and disturbed are on the verge of making a very wonderful discovery through their own experience. This is very exciting. Faith can really transform a person’s life. It can give them so many wonderful things to do, that they will forget their worries and sorrows.

Faith is something that can exist even independently of mystical traditions. This is because one way or another, human existence is mystical in itself. The relationship between men and nature, the way we are born, the way we get married and have children, the way we eat, sleep, think and feel, all this is indeed a mystical experience. We only require eyes to see it. Therefore, OIDA- therapy is not really a completely unknown concept -- our faith is our guiding star and impetus for everything we do. As the saying goes, faith can move mountains.

Faith and the personal-impersonal God

Beginning with the teachings of Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866), and up to the American transcendentalists and so many other intellectuals of Western thought, who had been exposed to and had acquired some knowledge of Vedic teachings, we find a common parallel and a paradox, which was created mostly due to the disheartening experiences of those valuable men with centralized religious institutions.

On one hand they were brought up with faith in God-Father, who can forgive our mistakes and who takes care of us and tries to teach us to follow the right path. On the other hand they came in contact with brilliant exposes of the only and final reality, which exists beyond the duality of this world. This reality is totally mystical and beyond the reach of the intellectual ecclesiasts. It is the non-differentiated or impersonal aspect of God, which exists in the transcendental realm and which is far higher than considerations of paradise and enjoyment, as opposed to hell and suffering. Even more fascinating is that this concept descends through smaller and bigger schools, which are non-centralized and have a non-violent tradition. These traditions reach back into antiquity.

One of the famous branches of this school is the Advaita-vada, founded by Sripada Sankaracarya. His teachings are similar to Lord Buddha’s precepts, and can also be found in many modern teachings. There are of course always different interpretations of teachings, but in all of these precepts we can commonly see a denial of a personal God, as God was presented or it is better to say misrepresented, by previous teachings of institutionalized religions.

The denial of a personal God as the Creator causes people to feel lost and incomplete due to not having a way to engage their natural devotional sentiments. Thus we find Ruckert (a contemporary of Goethe) and also Aldous Huxley expressing devotional declarations towards God, but then later giving preference to impersonal interpretations.

The perplexity of this topic goes all the way to the root-cause of all the problems of existence, which is envy. We do not want to accept higher authorities and orders; instead we want to control all others as well as material nature. Such a desire can hardly be harmonized with the concept of a personal God, as highest authority and the highest grace giving and saving instance.

Envy towards God, when projected into our daily life, produces as a result a world of competition and hostility, where each individual is trying to assert themself to be better than the others. This is again a fertile ground for many individual problems and disorders.

According to OIDA-therapy and the Vedic conclusions, we have to be broad-minded and see both, the impersonal spiritual aspect of God, as well as the devotional aspect towards a personal God as different aspects of the One-reality.

In OIDA-therapy you will find that both aspects are a balm for our material conditioning, and that the personal aspect of God and devotion to God corresponds in a very unique way to the innermost desire of our heart. On the other hand, to become null and void, or to merge into the ocean of cosmic non-differentiated consciousness, is either a kind of anesthesia or some ecstatic coma feeling.

Divinity is diversified. God or the truth can take different forms: God as nature, as the omni-conscious, the omnipresent, or in His personal form, with whom each and every one of us can establish a relationship, if we so wish.

OIDA-therapy accepts simultaneously the different aspects of Divinity. This makes it easier to understand the different possibilities for recovery and the healing potential of Divine love.